Rotten to the core
by xxTerror33xx
Summary: Nature is a cycle; it's life and death and everything in-between and after. For new life to appear something has to rot away, to decay and provide the space. It's a sign of rebirth to break down to it's most basic elements and be rebuilt in a new form. But it's also a indicator of something that is foul and rancid, of necrosis and disease. The Shinobi system is rotten.


Honestly, he expected more. More from them, more from her. Standing here at the end with the taste of ash, blood and betrayal on his tongue. He looked across the combined forces of the Shinobi Alliance, glaring into the man's regretful blue eyes. Aching and weary down to somewhere beyond his bones, he felt scraped clean and hollow. His chakra was nearly gone ripped out of him with the Kyūbi; his tainted brand of nature chakra was the only thing left behind.

It was difficult to focus, to think about why he hadn't collapsed and slept until he didn't wake. It was frustrating to have to start another fight after seemingly spending months doing nothing but fighting. Multiple fronts with shadow clones against enemies too varied, but still somehow so powerful, didn't blur the recollections into a tangled mess like his training did.

 _Trading thunderous blows with a Raikage. Fists and feet launched in blurs of blue and gold. Raiton enhanced blows that fell with the weight of mountains and still managed to pierce his Bijū cloak and the skin below. The Raikage bellowing something between the displaced air. Evidently this Raikage hadn't been impressed with the ninja he had faced._

 _He took sadistic joy in knocking the sneer off the strongest Raikage's face._

 _White and blue mist alive with nightmares and illusions and very real danger. This wasn't the swordsman's mist where a mistake would be a quick clean slice, it was a summon's where any mistake cost someone else's life. An jutsu flying at an illusion only to kill a member of their army. That stupid mustached-Mizukage was somewhere shouting something about water clones and clam summons at his sister. Wind jutsu on the scale of a natural disaster from the weasels and Yūka's Yin genjutsu were the reason they won._

 _Fighting monsters that he had killed with his bare hands. Five hearts crushed by his superior ninjutsu. Elemental jutsu that only grew in scale and power with every hand-sign. His opponent had no limit, no chakra exhaustion, no obvious weaknesses. The religious zealot with him had been elevated beyond the murderous avatar he had been before. A hollow vessel for a truculent goddess to massacre and stitch back together. He had almost been killed by the duo before. Then he had killed them; recalling the unholy screech of the goddess as he exiled her from the impure world, before finally eradicating the two blights on nature. He had killed the undying; he would do so again._

But he still stood and found it soeasy to remember _why_ he needed this fight. Before this war, before the Bijū training, before Akatsuki and Root and the Villages and the Mountain.

He remembered holding hands with Yūka standing over a grave. He was sombre because of the Yondaime's story. About a woman with hair and eyes like his sister who had loved them. She had protected them, gave her life for them, and never stopped caring even down to her last breath. The Hokage was devastated with her sacrifice, even more so when he couldn't avenge her. He made her death count, sealing the Kyūbi with the Sandaime. He was a called a hero for saving the village. But the masked man had escaped. The only thing left behind was a chunk of skin ripped off with the Hiraishin branded on it. That and a broken village with a mountain of bodies.

"Naruto," his father solemnly spoke, nearly whispering in the quiet of the graveyard, "Yūka—she wanted you to be called Uzumaki. That's why I have have a different last name than you."

He remembered the significance of his name, the weight of his mom's dying wish, Yūka's tears falling and their father picking them up smelling like paper and ink and the cheap laundry detergent they used then teleporting them to a house filled with love and care and the hazy warmth of a child's memories.

Yūka was safe in bed with her father after another night of nightmares fueled by the Kyūbi's Yin chakra. She was strange even then before the "Yincident" and unlocking her chakra, with the monolithic imbalance in her body pushing her mind years ahead of any others their age. The Yang had made him hyperactive and energetic; the Yin had made her thoughtful and quiet. As their godfather so eloquently put it, "He's got all the Uzumaki, and she, the Namikaze." They were two mismatched pieces of their parents. A blonde haired, blue eyed Uzumaki and a red haired, purple eyed Namikaze. The differences only grew more stark after the abduction.

The kidnapping hadn't been all that terrible, looking back on it. It had obviously been meticulously planned and the shinobi and kunoichi were all highly skilled. Fear was a good motivator. Obviously his father was still a man to be feared despite the fact he cooked in a pink apron, and sang in the kitchen.

It had been technically successful in every single way except for two. His sister had been too far risky to take, and most damning of all, he was a jinchuriki. He held the entirety of the Kyuubi's yang. Using reverse summoning to escape from a hidden village was ingenious, unless the target had enough chakra to disrupt your attempt to jump space-time. In all likelihood, it would take hundreds of average shinobi to even get close to being able to handle even half of the tailed-beast's chakra. And that was in addition to his own non-insignificant reserves, yet a small drop in the bucket by comparison, but still far more than most could match.

Aborted reverse summons tended to fail in the worst possible ways. He could still taste the blood of the summoner if he tried. Four people had died when the jutsu had failed. One from chakra exhaustion. Two more from the space-time failing. And the last from landing on the business end of a Senpou-infused tree branch.

The "Summoning Lands" was where all this started everything that happened started there with the war that nearly caused summons to become extinct…


End file.
